I Meant to Say Yes
by The Mushroom Fairy
Summary: Mafuyu left someone behind, someone who couldn't say goodbye. But that wasn't all she left unsaid... Complete.


If anyone had asked me if I loved him, I probably would have just shrugged my shoulders and said, "He's my boyfriend." Something like that. Noncommittal. Neither yes nor no. He was my boyfriend, but we never said "I love you." We just...were. Together. Nothing more, nothing less.

Then one day something strange occurred. His face, usually expressionless and unemotional, turned to me with a look of something akin to sadness. I didn't understand at the time what he was afraid of when he asked, "Hinano...do you love me?"

We were sitting together on his couch, half-listening to a talk show on TV. I was completely taken aback. I didn't know what to say.

For a moment I silently gazed back into his deep, dark, mysterious eyes, and what I saw there made me feel a rush of emotions I'd never felt before. Those feelings...are hard to describe. A yearning. An intense fear of losing something so very precious, something I had never known I'd had--something stronger than love.

I didn't know how to put those feelings into words. "What is it, Mafuyu?" I said instead.

The expression he wore changed immediately. The fear faded away as suddenly as it had washed over his countenance, and I was again looking at the rational young man I'd been dating since we were college freshmen. Serious, safe Mafuyu.

"I'm worried about Doctor Takamine," he said, and that much was clear, though the terror hidden just behind those dark orbs had vanished. "I think maybe something has happened to him."

"Oh." This wasn't at all what I had expected. What had I expected? I'm not sure. But not something that seemed so unrelated to "Do you love me?" as that.

"I'm going to look for him at the Himura mansion. Hinano... I don't know when I'll be coming back."

He meant "if I'll be coming back." I knew that as instantly as I knew that he wouldn't.

"No," I barely whispered. I looked down, my eyes fixed on a button on his white jacket.

"I have to," he said softly, looking down as he took my hand.

My eyes blurred instantly. Mafuyu never held my hand, never touched me at all when we were near other people. We went everywhere together, took classes together and joined clubs together, and we called ourselves a couple, but I didn't realize until that moment how I felt about him.

I didn't see Mafuyu again after that night. I thought about him constantly throughout the day, dreamed of him at night. I wrote his name instead of taking notes in class, I stared at his picture instead of studying. I was falling in love with him over and over again, but he was out of reach. I never bothered to call him; I knew before he'd left me that he wouldn't be coming back again.

Then one day a few weeks after his departure for Himura his sister came to visit me. It had been a long time since I'd seen Miku, but I didn't embrace her. I knew why she'd come before she even said it. I led her to the small kitchen of my apartment, but didn't offer her any tea. We sat down at the table across from one another and I simply stared at her unresponsively, hardly listening to what she said.

From the bits I gathered, it seemed as though Miku had gotten worried about her brother and gone to Himura mansion to look for him, but all she found was the camera their mother had given them. She made a remark about finding strange pictures on the roll of film but I didn't ask about them, so after a pause she moved on. She said that Professor Takamine and his crew had been found, none of them alive, and that's when her eyes filled with tears and she told me that Mafuyu was dead.

I already knew it was so. The longing I'd felt wasn't for a lover far-off who would be returning, but the loss of a soul mate who would not be coming back.

I didn't cry, only thanked Miku for stopping by and led her out again. Before she turned to go, she unzipped her purse and slipped a photo out of it, one of Mafuyu gazing out from the corner of the picture, and I assumed that he must have taken it of himself because of the odd angle. She handed it to me, then turned to go, one hand hastily wiping the moisture from her cheek.

I didn't cry at all that day. I felt almost as though a heavy burden had been lifted, the burden of worry and dread. Now that I knew for certain that there was nothing left to fear, nothing to hope for, I was free. But later that night, the tears finally came. I looked at the picture with a bleeding heart, and at last gave Mafuyu the answer I'd regretted never having given him in life.

I gazed into Mafuyu's eyes, and whispered, "Yes."


End file.
